Smells of the Shiprock Fair

That line is a twist of the title of a book by Luci Topahanso called Songs of the Shiprock Fair. She is an amazing poet and writer from Shiprock, which is near where I grew up. But that isn't what I want to blog about, maybe another day though. What I want to show you is what I did last night! See? Frybread. I made it all by myself, though it was for B's class for his immigration unit. He studied the Navajos and decided that for maximum points he should bring food. I made small pieces, about half as big as they are usually made, so it went pretty fast, and I was able to roll them out round, which NEVER happens. The smell in the house was fantastic...it is a smell somewhere between a Krispy Creme doughnut factory and a Saturday flea market. I can't explain it, but it is such a familiar and comforting smell. I couldn't help but have a taste of a hot one drenched in honey. It actually tasted pretty darn good too! It was a good thing I made just enough for the class, or I may have eaten more than one.

And here is Mimi enjoying her first piece ever. It is nearly as momentous as eating her first birthday cake. Jack isn't able to eat any wheat, so he isn't able to have frybread, but he has chewed on a mutton rib, so he is almost a real Navajo. Ben worked really hard on his report and learned all kinds of interesting facts to share with his class. He is so excited to present the whole project to his class that he is nearly beside himself, though he said that I will get fifty percent of the credit for typing what he told me to, generous of him, don't you think?

I finally finished Katja last week. I'll post pictures tomorrow, cause it is in the wash right now. I also turned the heel of the second sock, or should I say sock five? (As in HP5.) I know what you're thinking, big deal. You've been working on both of those for weeks. But it IS a big deal, because I had company last week. My dear friend from North Carolina was in the area and I was able to pick her and her girls up from Denver (where she was visiting other friends) and bring them back here for a few days. It is the first time we have seen each other in a few years, three actually. Jack was only a few months when she moved from Los Alamos. In fact, we have both added new babies to our families since then, so it was great to see her and her kids. We ran around a bit, and then when the kids went down for naps or to bed, we would sit and knit. She is one of my only kitty friends, so it was a lot of fun. Plus, we have similar taste because she was knitting a sock on the same yarn that I picked out for a pair of mine. The amazing thing that we discovered is that our kids look like siblings, and they are all about nine months apart. Can you imagine having four kids under the age of four? The nice part about going out was that no one thought my kids were mine, so if they were misbehaving, someone else got the blame! Haha. At one point they were all on one stroller and Eri was pushing it while I was looking at something in another part of the building. Poor Eri, she was given several looks, I'm not sure if they were piteous or disbelief, but either way, she was a good sport about it!

One more exciting thing that happened today is that I ran my first full mile. Well, at least in the past seventeen years. I ran track when I was in mid school, but I am not sure that I ever ran an entire mile without stopping. This is a big deal to me, I feel so accomplished.

I will be traveling for about a week at the end of the week, so I don't know that I will blog before I go, and I am not sure that I will be able to while I am gone. So I'll update more when I get back, or tomorrow if I can squeeze it in between laundry and packing...